Lecture | Symposium
There and Back Again: Spirit Travels in Western Religious Traditions (13th Leiden Symposium on New Religiosity)
- Date
- Monday 28 April 2025
- Time
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.47
Programme
19.30 Welcome
19.35 Dr Bastiaan van Rijn | Spiritual animal magnetism: Exploring other worlds in magnetic trance
20.05 Discussion
20.30 Break
20.50 Dr Sarah Perez | Reality Shifting: On the experiences, online communities and spiritual roots of a trending practice
21.20 Discussion
21.45 The discussion continues in a nearby pub
Organisation
The symposium is hosted by the Leiden Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR). The symposium is public and free; registration is not required.
More information?
Contact Markus Davidsen for more information.
Spiritual animal magnetism: Exploring other worlds in magnetic trance
Dr Bastiaan van Rijn (Uni Bern)
Abstract: Animal magnetism is an alternative healing method that started in the late eighteenth century. When it incorporated trance-like states in 1784, some magnetizers thought they could use their practice to reach other worlds. They used magnetic somnambulism—the precursor to hypnosis—to send their patients in spirit to other cities, planets, and even to religious destinations such as heaven and hell. In this talk, the various forms and aims of these somnambulistic spirit travels are explained. Then some of the influences that led spiritual animal magnetizers to practice such otherworldly adventures will be explored, particularly in the form of Western visionary narratives. Afterwards, it will be shown how such somnambulistic journeys inspired later religious movements such as Spiritualism and Theosophy, as well as experience narratives on near-death experiences and reality shifting. The main argument is not that spiritual animal magnetism instigated spirit travel, but rather that it helped to give spirit travels an aura of scientific authority and a means of voluntary inducibility that were not present in the religious context of the West before.
Bio: Bastiaan van Rijn a is postdoctoral researcher at the science of religion unit, University of Bern. His dissertation focused on attempts by nineteenth century animal magnetizers to prove the existence and content of life after death. His current research interests are contemporary alternative spirituality and playful attitudes toward religion.
Reality Shifting: On the experiences, online communities and spiritual roots of a trending practice
Dr Sarah Perez (Uni Bern)
Abstract: Reality shifting is a popular spiritual practice centered around the wish to shift one’s consciousness to other realities. It became popular online in late 2020 and is practiced mostly online and by persons falling under the demographic cohort of Generation Z. Generally, reality shifters practice a wide range of methods involving affirmations and visualization to try to project their consciousness into other (often fiction-based) realities, or to change this reality through imagination. In this talk, Reality shifting will be contextualized as a spiritual practice that is inspired by New Thought and is embedded within the wider contemporary spiritual milieu. That means, we can identify New Thought ideas and practices such as manifestation and astral projection as inspirations for the various methods of Reality Shifting. Similarly, other practices of the wider spiritual milieu have found their way into Reality Shifting, like the use of crystals, tarot reading or channeling. Through the lens of the study of religion it becomes clear that such processes of boundary work and integration make Reality Shifting a phenomenon that is strongly embedded in the spiritual milieu and at the same time unique in its composition.
Bio: Sarah Perez is a postdoctoral researcher at the science of religion unit, University of Bern. While her dissertation focused on early modern pamphlets containing deathbed visions, she has at the same time also worked on contemporary spirituality with a special focus on youth- and pop culture and online spirituality.
Previous Leiden symposia on New Religiosity
2012: Hekserij in Holland
2013: Identity and Tradition in Contemporary Paganism
2014: New Forms of Sacrality in the Netherlands
2015: Playing with Religion
2016: Elves, Spirits, and Aliens: Superhuman Entities in New Religions
2017: What Cards and Coins Reveal: Divinatory Techniques in the Netherlands
2018: Stories of the Supernatural: Encounters with the Other Side in Literary and Everyday Narratives
2019: The Paranormal: Experiences and Experiments
2021: Mormonism 200 Years On: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 200 years after Joseph Smith’s first revelation
2022: The Tell-Tale Art Divination and Oracular Practice from All Angles
2023: QAnon and Alien Gods: Plausibility Construction in the Cultic Milieu
2024: Religion and Fantasy
